Destiny 2: Armor Perks, How They Work & Making A “God Roll” Armor Set

Armor perks are back on armor which I think is just great. But what perks should you be looking out for? And what do some of them even do? That’s what we’re gonna be finding out today in this video with information more dense than a dying sun. We’re going to be going slot by slot and just kind of talking about what the perks are, what they do and the trends of each armor slot, then in the second half, we’re going to make 2 example god roll armor sets, so if you don’t care about what the perks are or what they do, you can just skip there. But first, let’s talk perk tiers: There are 3 tiers of perks. Tier 1 will say “slightly increases,” which is the smallest effect, tier 2 will not have an adjective and tier 3 is the enhanced version of a perk, which gives the greatest effect. Enhanced perks at the moment only come on Dreaming City armor and raid armor, along with exotics.

While I haven’t tested every single combination of perk against it’s enhanced and only slightly increased counterparts, I have no reason to believe that you shouldn’t try to get the enhanced version of any perk that can roll enhanced. That being said, there has been a case where the enhanced version of part of a perk wasn’t as good as a tier 2 version, but for the most part, you probably don’t need to worry about these fringe cases. The helm slot resolves around targeting perks, super energy perks, special weapon reserves and power weapon reserves. The helm slot can roll any individual weapon targeting perks, literally every type of weapon, not to mention that it can roll enhanced targeting on some weapons as well or it can roll a clustered targeting perk, like “all precision weapons.” Targeting perks improve accuracy, target acquisition and aim down sight speed on that weapon.

Target acquisition is more relevant on console than on PC, or rather those on controller compared to mouse and keyboard, it’s essentially the “stick” factor on a weapon. That’s not to say targeting perks are worthless on PC, they do have some other values like bullet magnetism. Accuracy is mainly a hip fire based bonus, but again, also has other slight benefits for aim down sights. The enhanced targeting perks that can roll on a helm are: hand cannon, bow, sniper, and linear fusion. Next, we have super energy perks where you get bonus super energy on grenade, melee, shotgun, sniper, or heavy weapon kills. Heavy weapon and grenade kills can roll the enhanced perk on the helm slot. So how much energy are we talking here? Well, a normal super with no mods takes 5 minutes to charge if you are idle.

Pump Action reduces this by 5-6 seconds, or 1.7% cooldown reduction per kill, with Remote Connection, aka sniper kills, giving a 7 second reduction. Ashes to assets is approximately the same thing, with Enhanced Ashes to Assets being about 9 seconds. Hands-On is about 9-10 seconds reduction, with 2 kills back to back giving us a super is 4:42. Heavy Lifting was also approximately 9 seconds. Keep in mind all of these reductions include the energy gained from a kill as well as the bonus. Some of this seems kinda off to me, like why is grenade the weakest when it takes the longest to regenerate. Heavy Lifting is ANY weapon, but then again, I guess it is power weapon which is ammo limited.

Hands-On seems really good, but maybe that’s the risk factor of it? Anyway, moving on.\par Then we have the reserves perk, these perks increase the maximum size of your reserves for that particular weapon. In the helm slot, we can roll fusion, sword, rockets, grenade launcher, linear fusion, shotgun, and sniper reserves, so, basically non-primary weapons. You can also roll special or heavy ammo finder, increasing the frequency of which you find those bricks of ammo on the ground. However some research was done recently on reddit by user u/BoxofRingsAndNails (and u/KrystallAnn) and their friends that showed that stacking more than one heavy ammo finder perk may actually have no impact or even a negative impact on the drop rates of heavy ammo. Bungie knows about this post and say they are investigating, so for now, I can’t recommend stacking this beyond 1 and even then, it may be difficult to notice a large difference in drops.

This perk isn’t Ruin Wings. Moving to the arm slot, this is all about reload speed, a couple more energy perks, and scavenging ammo. Arms can roll many types of reload speed type perks, individual weapons, groups of weapons, specific groups, and grenade launcher, hand cannon, rockets and shotguns have the possibility of enhanced reload perks . For example, the difference between enhanced rocket reload and regular isn’t too crazy, but ANY bonus makes quite a noticeable difference compared to a default reload. Then we have some energy based perks, Impact Induction and Momentum Transfer, of which both of these perks can roll the enhanced versions. Momentum gives melee energy on grenade hits and impact gives grenade energy on melee attack. Testing Momentum Transfer showed that 1 tick of grenade reduced the cooldown of my melee attack by about 1 to seconds. Yup. That’s it. The effect is on an internal cooldown as well. Fortunately, Enhanced Momentum Transfer was a reduction of 5 seconds, which is a bit better. I think the internal cooldown of the effect is mainly for grenades that have a damage over time effect, but uh…

Feel like this would be ok for a buff, or maybe it’s just broken and needs a fix. Impact Induction has an internal cooldown of about 8 seconds which makes sense since you actually have the ability to punch things whenever you want. However, UNLIKE momentum transfer, the DEFAULT impact induction gives you 7 seconds worth of cooldown reduction, which leads me to believe that Momentum Transfer is just not even working correctly. Then we just have Fastball, which increases grenade throw distance. Scavenger is not the same as reserves, surprising to say the least, I know. Scavenger increases the amount of ammo you get for a particular weapon when you pick up a brick, whereas reserves increases the total amount of ammo you can hold.

On the arms, you can roll a scavenger perk for any non-primary weapon and I believe this perk works in PvP except for normal fusion rifles. You can also roll a special or heavy ammo finder perk, works the same way as the helm. Moving onto the chest armor, this is all about your unflinching perk, where you flinch less when being shot at. Every weapon type is featured here, individual weapons, groups of weapons, with bows, snipers, linear fusions and scouts able to roll the enhanced versions of unflinching. Unflinching is the ONLY thing that can roll in the middle slot by the way, so don’t bother looking for anything else in this column. Then in the right slot we have reserve perks for primary weapons, along with primary ammo and special ammo finders. The legs feature dexterity perks and class ability based perks.

Dexterity increases ready and stow speed of weapons, very important and I think undervalued by the general population in PvP, whereas for PvE, not as big of a deal. Weapons that can roll enhanced dexterity are: hand cannons, shotguns, snipers and rocket launchers. In the same column are class ability perks that generate energy of some kind. Perpetuation will generate class ability energy when you use your class ability, bomber generates grenade on class ability use, outreach is melee energy and dynamo will generate super energy. Bomber can also roll enhanced and Distribution is the other “enhanced” perk which actually gives energy to all abilities. Note that Dynamo is currently being looked at by Bungie for being too strong when combined with other super energy generating… things in PvP. So how much energy are we talking? Let’s start with Dynamo.

A super takes 5 minutes to charge with no activity, Dynamo will reduce the cooldown by 10 seconds or about 3.33, repeating of course, percent of your super. Bomber will reduce a grenade cooldown from to 1:17, so 4 seconds, and Outreach will do the same for your melee cooldown, to 1:17, with Hunters getting a 4 second reduction as well. Perpetuation reduced Titan wall cooldown by about 3 seconds, with Rift being about 5-6 seconds and Hunter about 1 second. In the right side column, we have have scavenger perks for primary weapons and then we have primary ammo and special ammo finders.

The class item revolves around energy when you pick up an orb of light. There are 5 perks that can get you the following: health regen starts on orb pick up, chunk of health on orb pick up, class ability, grenade, or melee energy, with Absolution being the enhanced perk generating energy everywhere. In the other column, it’s just everything, reserves and scavenger perks, all ammo finders, it’s a mess. This brings us to the question: what the hell should I actually get on my armor? WELL, that is going to depend on the weapons you’re using, your playstyle and what you’re doing, but let’s try to come up with some example god roll armor sets. Note that we will not be including exotics when coming up with this list. The first thing you’re going to want to do is have some form of a weapon loadout so you know what perks to look out for, then figure out if you can roll any enhanced perks for those weapons. I’m going to take my most common loadouts and try to make some god roll armor sets. In PvP, it’s a pulse rifle, shotgun and grenade launcher and in PvE, we’ll say I’m doing the raid, so it’s pulse rifle, shotgun and sniper rifle and I’ll be on my Titan.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a single enhanced pulse rifle perk in the entire game, so we’re off to a bad start. We have two enhanced shotgun perks arms and legs, we’ll look at legs first, which also have some other good perks on them. In PvE, I don’t really value stow and ready speed at all, whereas in PvP, I value it a lot. So, for PvP, we’d look at the enhanced shotgun ready speed, but for PvE, we’d be looking for an energy generation perk instead. Which one? Depends on how you play. Maybe you have enhanced ashes to assets where you’d want grenade energy a lot, thus you’d want enhanced Bomber, just an example. We’ll just go to the helm next, we’re probably going to be looking for pulse rifle targetting for PvP, but something like targetting may not have as much value to you in the PvE experience, so we’d look for an energy perk instead. Again, depends on the situation you’re in. In the raid, I’m not really using my special or power weapons to actually kill things very often, I use them for damage on bosses, meaning ashes to assets or hands-on would be the play.

In a strike using a rocket launcher, heavy lifting may be the way to go if you’re going for add clear. Your reserve perk would be for whatever special or heavy you’re using. Moving to arms, we’re looking at reload speed perks and melee/grenade perks. Now reload speeds are pretty universally good, but I’m the kind of person who values ability energy over reload speed in a PvE setting, so for my arms, I’d want enhanced impact induction or momentum transfer. In PvP, my pulse rifle has outlaw on it, so I don’t really need another reload speed perk on top of that, but my shotgun could use some help, so we’d grab enhanced shotgun reload speed. The scavenger perk would likely be shotgun, I don’t really run into ammo problems with my pulse rifle, but maybe you’re a hand cannon user and do have some ammo problems, all depends. Chest armor is ONLY unflinching, so we’re looking for pusle rifle unflinching here, but if I’m in the raid using a sniper, maybe I grab enhanced unflinching sniper rifle for safety purposes or if I’m sniping in PvP.

On chest armor or maybe leg armor, this is where I’d grab the special ammo finder. I think primary scavenger, reserves and ammo finder are all not really that important, but if you find them important, then go for it. Class item is where you maybe pick the heavy ammo finder, since the helm and arms have non-primary reserves and scavenger that you MAY want to utilize, but you’re not gonna get a TON of ammo from an individual reserve perk, so maybe you don’t care that much, but if you stack 2 reserves, you get a little more, meaning you could use the heavy ammo finder on gloves, you see how fluid this situation is? I personally like chunks of health for orb pick up, or a health based perk in general, so I’m looking for recuperation or better already.

So, my PvP god roll armor would look like this, going from top down: helm has pulse targetting and shotgun reserves, arms with enhanced shotgun reload and shotgun scavenger, chest with unflinching pulse and insert whatever for the other, boots are enhanced shotgun dexterity and whatever scavenger, with the class item having recuperation and maybe shotgun scavenger.\par My PvE raid god roll armor would look like this, going from top down: helm has enhanced ashes to assets with shotgun reserves, arms are enhanced impact induction with shotgun scavenger, chest is enhanced unflinching sniper with special ammo finder, legs are Distribution with pulse scavenger, with the class item being recuperation and heavy ammo finder. Again, these are just examples with my loadouts, they don’t include exotics and they’re just ONE example. Your god roll armor will not be the same as mine and you need to decide on loadouts that you use for X activity, then build armor sets around those loadouts.

Should heavy ammo finder ever be affected to the point where stacking 3 of them gives a noticeable increase in power ammo bricks found, then things may change again, where you could stack power ammo based perks as much as possible for a super energy build, stuff like that. Anyway, hope this was helpful in your search for the perfect armor set. We’ll explore the issue of weapon rolls in the near future. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you next time. .